Intel is already working on processors immune to Meltdown and Specter, and they will arrive later this year.
Intel is already working on fixing the security problems derived from the Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities in its chips. As Brian Krzanich, CEO of the company, has said, his plans are those of launch chips immune to these vulnerabilities throughout this year 2018.
The announcement has been made during the presentation of the latest financial results of the company, so it has been directed to Intel investors. Krzanich has assured that Intel has assigned “to some of their best minds” the task of addressing vulnerabilities and looking for how to implement a long-term solution on the chips.
The CEO of the company has also ensured that they have been “working against the clock” to address vulnerabilities and the attacks derived from them, although they are “keenly aware” that they still have a lot more work ahead of them.
Intel has explained that the idea is to permanently avoid Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities in their chips, for which changes are being made to the architecture of the processors. This is going to take a long time, so the company does not believe that updated chips will become available until later in 2018.
So what we have is an Intel that seems to be working on releasing a new range of processors with their updated architecture to be immune to vulnerabilities discovered earlier in the year. They have not given a specific date for its launch, so in the meantime we will have to continue delegating some patches that have been causing multiple problems since their launch, and which Intel is also working to solve.
On this occasion, and as he did during his speech at CES 2018, the CEO of Intel has not apologized or promised that cases like this will not happen again. At the moment, all we have is the promise that they will sell us vulnerability-free processors in the coming months.
Intel wants to convey security
As for the financial results presented, these belong to the fourth quarter of 2017, and are better than expected with revenues of 17.1 billion dollars. This is more than the $ 16.34 billion predicted by analysts, and a $ 730 million increase in revenue from the same quarter last year.
And on what is to come, Krzanich has told his investors that despite the discovery of these vulnerabilities, the company’s financial outlook has not changed, and that they do not expect any “material impact” on their expenses or the costs of their products.
Clearly, it is unlikely that Intel actually believes that all these problems are not going to take their toll, and that its financial outlook has not really changed. However remember that they are talking to their investors, so it is to be expected that they will try to make up the reality as much as they can so that they do not panic and their actions suffer.
As much as Intel talks and assures, it will not be until the end of the current quarter that we know whether or not these vulnerabilities really end up costing the company a financial cost. It will also be interesting to see what the reaction of users ends up being in the long term, especially when they have to change computers and choose the processor.
In Engadget | Meltdown and Specter: this is the nightmare in the security of Intel, AMD and ARM CPUs
